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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29087058">Down in the Cellar at Midnight</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jeevey/pseuds/Jeevey'>Jeevey</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Love in the Time of Corona [12]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Oasis (Band)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>M/M, Masturbation</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 11:35:37</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,936</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29087058</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jeevey/pseuds/Jeevey</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>March 18th, 2020. Noel listens to a voicemail.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Liam Gallagher/Noel Gallagher, Noel Gallagher/Meg Mathews, Noel Gallagher/Sara MacDonald</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Love in the Time of Corona [12]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1747696</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>26</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Down in the Cellar at Midnight</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Noel’s phone lit up some time near midnight. Not a text, a voice call. Liam. Noel watched the glow against the wall for a long time, thinking, he must be leaving a message. There came the quiet click that meant he had a voicemail, and the room went black.</p><p>Noel couldn’t sleep again after that. He went vaguely dozey until Sara came home and roused to the sound of her moving quietly about the room, only the occasional heavy clunk of a drawer betraying her clumsiness. He wondered for the millionth time how she managed to drive all the way home from London. Well, he knew how she drove, of course. Fast, and ceaselessly, thrumming through the gears on her Range Rover all the seventy miles from London without a pause. He just didn’t know how she did it fucking blitzed. </p><p>She knocked over a hairbrush, laughed quietly, and slid into bed. Her laugh turned throaty as she snuggled up to him. “Good night?” she murmured in his ear.</p><p>“Mm,” he said. </p><p>She drew one slim knee across him and burrowed into his collar. She was warm under her silk pyjamas. She smelled like a distillery splashed with perfume and mouth rinse, but underneath it was the scent of her skin. He ran a thumb speculatively along her thigh, wondering if they might. It had been a long time. “Mmmm,” she said, making the hairs prickle all over his body. She snuggled again, and just as his body resolved into a definite decision to try it on her breathing deepened into a snore. </p><p>He lay still, letting her breath touch him slowly. “It was good,” he told the darkness.</p><p>Her breathing seemed to fill the room with ghosts. He thought of a day, years ago, watery in his memory now. That was his first house then, and his other wife. The house was full of people that day, as it always was. People fucking on the sofa, no one even looking twice. A couple of girls rucking up their skirts against each other in the kitchen, and a group of people nearby arguing about aliens and Russian politics. A football game on loud, and the stereo even louder. Noel wandered through the wreckage to the pantry, thinking of a box of toaster pastries that he’d put there earlier. Toaster pastries and tea would set him right, if no one had eaten them yet.</p><p>In the pantry was the shadowy body of a man, rocking rhythmically against the shelving just inside. Noel didn’t give a fuck what they were up to. If they wanted privacy, they could find a room. “Toaster pastries, mate,” he said. </p><p>The male figure pushed harder, groaned, clasped the bare thigh that wrapped around his waist. “Busy,” he grunted. Noel’s eye dropped to the woman’s leg. It wore Meg’s silver anklet and white trainers. The man smoothed her skin again. The silver charm she wore on the lace dangled over her toe. They’d bought it together in a high street shop, back when first they began to realize they were going to have money. It clinked as the strange man thrusted. Noel turned away, feeling sick.</p><p>He didn’t know what he was looking for until he ran into it: Liam, coming out of the guest toilets in the back passage with a glass in either hand. “What is it,” Liam said instantly, when Noel bumped into him. He hadn’t even seen Noel’s face.</p><p>“I need you,” Noel said. He took both glasses away and put them on a window sill for a maid to find. He took Liam by the hand. He led him through the living room, right up the main staircase in front of everybody, and down the hall to his own room. They passed several people the way.</p><p>“Noel,” Liam began.</p><p>“I don’t care,” Noel said numbly. “I don’t care.”</p><p>He shut the bedroom door when he’d brought Liam inside. He took off his clothes without speaking and sat down naked on the bed. Liam stood looking as if he didn’t know what he was doing there. “Come here,” Noel told him. Liam came. Noel drew him onto the bed so that he knelt over Noel's thighs, his shoes dangling over the edge. He clasped Liam's hips and guided them up toward his face.</p><p>“Now?” Liam asked. “Noel. You’re sure?”</p><p>Noel pushed off Liam’s shoes and socks, ran his fingers down the soles of Liam’s bare feet.  “I love you,” he said.</p><p>He didn’t know if anybody saw them going in, or if anyone heard them later on, slamming the headboard against the wall and screaming out loud. It didn’t matter. It didn’t then and it didn’t now, years later, lying with a different woman in a different house, watching the light of his brother’s voice go out. Noel got up and took his phone downstairs.</p><p>Noel looked at the glare of the kitchen while the kettle heated. Sara had redone it in black and silver when they bought it, covered everything with marble and steel until it looked no different from any rich cunt’s kitchen in London. He didn’t let her do the floors. The massive slates remained, and Noel watched their veins spread out like rivers while he ignored his phone, facedown and silent as a bomb.</p><p>Down in the cellar was a room like a cave. Someone had laid down rug over the rough flagstones and made shiplap walls to enclose it from the stone foundations, ages ago. There are already a few old sofas in it when they bought the place, all Noel had done was nailed up a few sheets of purple silk and fuzzy cheetah-print fabric. It wasn’t a studio, though Sara liked to call it that. It wasn’t set up for recording and he would never write music in a dark hole in the ground. He came when he wanted to be alone. He dialed his voicemail on the way downstairs.</p><p>
  <em>It's me. Reckon you know that. I mean you can hear it's me, right? Anyhow. I'm not drunk. If that's what you want to know. I mean, you know. Two lagers that's barely anything, innit? Who knows with you these days.</em>
</p><p>Noel could have laughed, or cried. It was almost like talking to him.</p><p>
  <em>Cos what else is there to do in self isolation, right? Fuck all. You're the fucking same, only you're sipping it from a crystal wine glass and pretending you're all cultured. Like you ain't that same lad born and raised in Longsight. Like a Bakewell tart wasn't the high point of a Sunday afternoon. Yeah. Bakewell tarts. You know exactly what I'm talking about, don't you.</em>
</p><p>
  <em></em>
</p><p>
  <em></em>
</p><p>
  <em>Bakewell tarts, yeah? That's what I'm calling about. Fucking biblical. I've been dreaming of them fuckers for a whole fucking week. That's what happens in isolation, man. You start fantasising about baked goods like there's no tomorrow.</em>
</p><p>Noel listened carefully to the rough tone of Liam’s voice. He sounded like he needed to get laid.</p><p>
  <em> The sugary...what's it? The frosting. Creamy and sweet, like. You lick it first so it melts a bit in your mouth. And then the crumbly buttery crust. And then the jam part and the almond part. You know, that perfect mix, sort of, dig it out with your tongue so there's a sort of shell that remains and...and...and then the cherry. That's the best part. You never liked that fucking cherry, man, did you?</em>
</p><p>Noel threw himself down on the couch and got comfortable. Liam’s voice was crystal clear, as if he was actually in the room. Christ, how long since they had actually spoken?</p><p>
  <em>Only now I got to thinking about it...now that I rightly remember. I think you just said you hated that fucking cherry because I loved it. You know what I mean?</em>
</p><p>There were two messages, and he listened to the second one too.</p><p>
  <em>Sorry. Me again. Fucking answer machine thing. Right. What was I...the cherry. </em>
</p><p>Liam’s voice was deeper now than years ago. It had been forever since they’d talked. No wonder he sounded old.</p><p>
  <em>I mean where am I going to get a Bakewell tart now in the middle of the fucking night? I could go to Tescos in the morning, I suppose. But it wouldn't be the same, would it?</em>
</p><p>It sounded like he was right inside Noel’s head. It made him itch.</p><p><em> I hope I've got you fucking starving for Bakewell tarts now, like. I'll be giving you fucking wet dreams about almonds and fucking cherry jam.</em><br/>
Noel deleted the message and went back to the first one. His cock was still congested from earlier, despite the hours of starting at the dark. Still aching for something that wasn’t there.<br/>
<em>That's what happens in isolation, man. You start fantasising about baked goods like there's no tomorrow.</em><br/>
Noel squeezed his cock to make it subside. It rose rebelliously, and when the message ended he was left with a death grip on his willy like a two year old. He eased his grip apologetically and started the message again. Halfway through it he pulled the drawstring on his pyjamas and slid his hand inside. It eased the ache inside him. He cupped himself down by the root and listened.</p><p> <em>You lick it first so it melts a bit in your mouth. And then the jam part and the almond part. You know, that perfect mix, sort of, dig it out with your tongue so there's a sort of shell that remains and </em></p><p>He thought of Liam’s mouth. The smooth arch of his lip and the softness inside. He put the recording back to hear it again.</p><p>
  <em>You know, that perfect mix, sort of, dig it out with your tongue </em>
</p><p>Christ. Noel began to work his hand over the head. The recording ended, and he set it to the beginning again.</p><p>
  <em>It's me. Reckon you know that. I mean you can hear it's me, right?</em></p><p>Noel pushed up into his hand. He got off every day, of course. But that was in the shower. A matter of business, like washing his face and brushing his teeth. Not like this, in a strange part of the house, alone in the big night as if he’d come here on purpose so he wouldn’t be discovered.</p><p>
  <em>Yeah. Bakewell tarts. You know exactly what I'm talking about, don't you?</em>
</p><p>Noel sighed and adjusted his body on the sofa, trying to unwind. Trying to make it last longer. Instead his cock just swelled to bursting, the hard ridge tightening and the tender frenulum slick beneath his palm.</p><p> <em>then the jam part and the almond part. You know, that perfect mix, sort of, dig it out with your tongue</em></p><p>Liam’s mouth, Christ. Always so busy, his brow furrowed in a concentration of pleasure as he ate, quirking into a dirty smile when he caught Noel looking. The way he bent his head to enjoy it utterly, the way he didn’t see anything on earth but what pleased him--but what pleased him--</p><p>Noel pressed his face into the sofa so the phone didn’t slip and came. He shivered and gasped when it was over, as shaky and wired as if he wasn’t alone. Like when you’ve just made a new lover and it was really good, and you lie together in silence afterward thinking, <em>Fuck me. What now?</em></p><p>Liam went on. <em>Only now I got to thinking about it...now that I rightly remember. I think you just said you hated that fucking cherry because I loved it. You know what I mean?</em></p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Liam's texts are by Savageandwise, quoted from her story Bakewell Tarts RULE C'mon You Know.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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